"This Master in contemporary instrumental composition by the Katarina Gurska Center in Madrid is one of the few examples in Europe of a serious, consistent and widely articulated study about this topic."

1. Ruth Prieto: On February 20th you will be giving one of the 10 seminars organised in Madrid by the Katarina Gurska Centre on the subject of contemporary instrumental composition. What can you tell us about this initiative?

Pierluigi Billone: This Master in contemporary instrumental composition by the Katarina Gurska Center in Madrid is one of the few examples in Europe of a serious, consistent and widely articulated study about this topic.
What I appreciate the most is the open minded and plural attitude of approach of the program.
The students, besides the constant work with their teachers, can come in touch with many and so different other professional recognized figures, which are active in this field and can offer their real and actual professional experience.

2. R.P.: As a composer taking part in these seminars, you will be talking about your musical language and technique. What can you tell us about that?

Pierluigi Billone: I will use my own work only as starting point for wider considerations, in this case no more individual and personal. This is a seminar, with a focus and an articulation, and not with a presentation of my work.
As a consistent part of my work deals with the constant reflection on the work method, tools, way of thinking, capacity to become aware of the perspectives and to open new ones, and the sense of all this together, it should not be so difficult to move from the single work to a general view.
My Seminar is centred on my work Mani. Mono 2007 for solo Springdrum. I will show and demonstrate the whole process of work from the very beginning to the final score, and each passage of this long process will be underlined and pointed out as a possible question, open on the different works and point of view of other composers.

3. R.P.: What new perspectives do you hope that participants in the course will learn?

Pierluigi Billone: There is always only one possible perspective: the quality, the constance and the discipline of the attention and the practice.
And, therefore, the possible poetic level of the work.

4. R.P.: Also, for you as a creator and teacher, what place does teaching of composition have for you?

Pierluigi Billone: I can teach only because I am already (always) in the condition and in the rule of someone who learns, by myself, from myself and from all people I come into touch with.
Otherwise, I would have nothing to teach.
I am in the learning – if it is possible to say it this way -, alone or with other (younger) colleagues.

5. R.P.: Where are you right now as a composer?

Pierluigi Billone: I am at the work number 45.

6. R.P.: How do you see the contemporary music scene today?

Pierluigi Billone: It is a chaotic explosion/implosion of activity, in all directions. A lot of this activity has simply no sense and no interest. It is normal. Something deciding has changed in the last 20 years, and deals with the younger generations (I am older, 56).
Basically each common cultural and memory background has disappeared, and something else has taken its place: the empty box of the digital way of thinking and living, a flat uninteresting common way to perceive, to think, to live, and to dream life, which makes any activity of life without interest and originality, and therefore creates an (unaware) emptiness.
Despite the appearance and the surface, and the “Devil” rhythm of life of our actuality, there is a deep, wide, all over spread out sense of …….nothing. And this nothing is called …..Art or cultural/intellectual entertainment. Me, for instance, I am not an artist. I am a worker.
I take care of the *Sound.
Music is stronger, has deeper roots in the existence than these weak and superficial actual points of view, and therefore it makes sense to learn.